


Don't Misconstrue and Don't Misapprehend

by TruckThat



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (also sober sex), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drunk Sex, Drunk Texting, Getting Back Together, M/M, Plus Bonus Thanksgiving-adjacent Content that may or may not quite qualify as, Texts From Your Ex, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:33:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21602269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TruckThat/pseuds/TruckThat
Summary: What does it say about Hux that he was awake at three AM, just thinking of signing out of his google docs? What does it say about him that he texted Ren back, that he picked up the phone? Ren hadn't been reaching out on purpose. He wasn't in his right mind, half slurred on the phone, half sweet like he didn't remember why he shouldn't be sweet with Hux anymore. But Hux had been sober. Had been working late.The vodka doesn'thelpwith much, exactly.A Texts From Your Ex AU featuring regrettable drunk texts, wildly unsober reminiscences, and the looming, unholy spectre of American Thanksgiving.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 18
Kudos: 83





	Don't Misconstrue and Don't Misapprehend

**Author's Note:**

> Happy American Thanksgiving!! This isn't actually _especially_ a Thanksgiving story--at best it might qualify as, like, a pre-Thanksgiving story?--but since it is a plot point, I thought this was probably the right weekend to post it. In the spirit of this holiday that is a complete mystery to me, a non-American: have some sloppy, drunk reminiscences about sloppy-drunk sex and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of gratefulness. This is messy porn, in case you need some this time of year. (I wrote this in a fit of insane impulse and was very reckless with my tenses, plus the title's from a Placebo lyric. Please consume responsibly.)

One thing is, is that Kylo is _wasted._ Absolutely fucking trashed. But he’s not at the club anymore. He _was_ at a club? He got home somehow. Even though—even though, listen, he's totally fine to go out and dance for like three more hours (also can't quite remember why that, like, stopped happening? Did he take an Uber home? Did Phasma bring him because he got too embarrassing?). He _wants_ to go back out and dance some more. He wants to dance with _Hux_.

Like.

He wishes Hux was his date. To the club. Even Kylo can tell that's not a _great_ plan; it's not where you should go on a date. It's maybe where you could _meet_ a date. Not where he met Hux, though. Hux would never go—or he'd bitch about it. Hux hates the club.

Also Kylo.

Hux hates Kylo.

So that's a problem and he wants to—he wants to fix it. Hux _could_ like the club. If he went with Kylo. Anyway Kylo barely even goes out clubbing anymore, not unless somebody drags him. Kylo knows Hux hates the club but also Kylo has seen him trashed, like, trashy-trashed, at least once. Maybe only the once, at Poe's wedding. That's the time Kylo can really remember, anyway, the time he's really remembering right now. It was a gay wedding, _obviously_ , which—yeah, as in same-sex, but also as in, _that shit was so gay_ ; the cake was black with purple holographic cake glitter, and also Kylo's memory has a lot of glitter confetti in it.

There was this really good DJ—not tonight, that guy sucked probably, Kylo just didn't care, but at that wedding—and there were a lot of strobe lights and also he smoked some weed behind the dumpster with... somebody? Maybe also Phasma? Anyway, when he came in, Hux was shitfaced. On tequila shots. Or maybe he was already shitfaced before that. But he has this, like, sense memory of—intense _wonder_ , because Hux and tequila and he smells like limes? And there's a lot of strobe lights and Hux _grinding on him_ and _laughing_ but also almost-falling-down drunk and hanging off him but also kissing him, and it's dark and there's strobe lights and there's grit on Hux's neck that tastes like margarita rimmer and it's stuck there with sweat when Kylo puts his mouth on it. He remembers Hux was _good_ at it. At dancing, at everything; he looked so fucking drunk and so fucking good and Kylo loved him. There was glitter in Hux's hair and all across one cheekbone.

Kylo wishes, with the clarity of someone drunk enough to have only one train of thought, that Hux was here and hating it. He doesn't even need Hux to be here and drunk enough to dance with.

That's the thing about Hux. He's so _hard_. Spiny and tough and tricky as hell. Even when Kylo did manage to drag him out, he was like a wet cat, if cats could hunch themselves over a pint of red ale, never quite letting Kylo beg him out of the booth and onto the dance floor.

And Kylo would—would have—would do shots with somebody even though Hux looked at him like _that_ and not in a good way when he did it, and Kylo would wanna dance so bad. He did, like, maybe a lot of shots earlier tonight actually so that might be the problem here. He'd wanna dance, but only if Hux did. Like. Only with Hux. So he'd sit in the booth and whine at him and try to kick his ankles. And he'd be a little dizzy but really so happy just to sit with Hux and make Hux scowl at him until he finally kicked him back right in the shin. But Hux wouldn't kick very hard because Kylo isn't very subtle—and especially not after a few shots. Or more than a few. Hux would _know_. He always knew—Kylo thought he always knew—how stupid happy Kylo was that Hux would just let him sit close and sometimes glare in his direction. And he'd kick Kylo right in the shin but he'd be grinning, a little, kinda, sort of mean but in a sexy way.

And he'd get bored of the club, which would be fine. If he doesn't wanna dance with Kylo, that's okay, they can go somewhere else. Anywhere else. But Hux'd have had a couple beers, too, and Kylo would be sloppy by this point, and he'd take Kylo by the wrist. That possessive touch alone would make Kylo almost ecstatic enough to sober him up, but he'd still be sloppy just... just _fizzing_ , now, too.

And they'd pretend like they were going home. All of their friends—Kylo's friends—would think Hux was taking him home, if they even noticed, if they weren't at least as messed up as Kylo was.

So like, yeah, he'd pretend like they were going home. Leaving fingerprints in the inside of Kylo's arm.

And he'd take Kylo somewhere dark and sneaky instead. Someplace where nobody would find them as long as Kylo wasn't loud. And just. Put his hands down Kylo's pants and be mean to him.

Pull his shirt collar down to get at his shoulder and _chew a hole in him_ , practically, make it really, really hurt where nobody could see it and he'd just be fiddling with Kylo's fly while he did it. Unzipping soooo slow, one catch at a time, so Kylo couldn't even breathe without his help. And he'd be dizzy anyway, because of the shots, and he'd be regretting them, kind of, because Hux all on his own makes him dizzy as hell. So this would be like his brains are sloshing out of his ears. Like, the back of his head kinda hurts but it doesn't occur to him until midway through that the _reason_ it hurts is because he's grinding it into a brick wall. His head is thunked all the way back so that there's nothing at all between Hux and anything Hux wants, anything, even if what he wants is just to gnaw on Kylo until he _cries_ without ever getting him off.

He'd be so fucking happy. Kylo would be. _Completely_ happy. Hux would just be running his fingertips up and down Kylo, not through his underwear anymore but just _in_ his underwear. Whole hand down Kylo's pants in some hallway because he'll tease but he also really just likes Kylo skin to skin.

It was cute, how Hux always just wanted both of them naked, like, as soon as possible, no fucks actually given. He would have killed Kylo for real if Kylo had ever told him that he thought this. Nothing about Hux had ever been cute. He'd have killed Kylo if Kylo had ever even let on that he'd _noticed_.

But he'd be touching Kylo's bare dick, no question. He'd be sober enough to try and make it seem teasing, like an afterthought, or like this time maybe he wasn't gonna. Was just going to, like, check that Kylo was there, so delicately, thumb at the tip for just a second just to see if he was leaking. (Ohhh, that's a thought. He would be, and he wouldn't have noticed other than like: generally, _yes_ , because his whole brain is just _Hux Hux Hux yes please_ —but then Hux's thumb would be sticky when he flicked it around the edge.) But—Hux would be a couple beers in, though, because even if Hux never gets sloppy (never, oh, except one time, and he'd _kissed Kylo on the dance floor,_ he'd _laughed against Kylo's face)_ , Hux likes to drink. He'd liked to drink _with Kylo,_ maybe, Kylo had thought. Even if he faked like he hated everything, Kylo knew him—did know him—and he'd smile at Kylo sometimes, too, in that secret code expression that seemed like he wasn't smiling at all. Except, if you knew him, you knew he was actually really having fun.

So Hux would be pretending like it was an afterthought, only he'd still have his face buried into Kylo's shoulder where he'd yanked Kylo's shirt down. And he'd have forgotten that he'd been biting at it. His mouth would just be resting there, open and soft against where it hurt, breathing a little fast and a little wet because he's _concentrating._

On touching Kylo's dick just right.

_i liked it everytime you touched me. Like. all the times.._

Kylo hit send. He sort of squinted to do it but. Hux already knew, right? Right. He definitely knew, because when he decided that he _really_ hated Kylo, no messing around, he stopped. And Kylo just—wishes he hadn't stopped.

It occurs to him that Hux is probably in bed. Too late. But maybe he's still awake. Maybe he'll talk to Kylo, at least, if he doesn't have to touch him to do it. Kylo will... invite him out for drinks next time? Tomorrow? They can go to a boring pub that Hux likes. Like friends do. They can be friends.

_It's three o'clock. You're just horny. Drink some water._

Kylo fumbles the phone when it vibrates; Hux texts back _right away_. He drops it under the table and then has to wrangle it out from under there, which makes him realize that he's _really dizzy_. Like _really_. He lays his head on his forearm on the carpet and squints one-eyed at the phone to resolve it. The carpet down here feels pretty fucking nice. Like. He should get off it and maybe Hux is right about the water.

_bring me some??_

_Go fuck yourself. I have work._

Yep. Hux still hates him. He'll just lie here and no one will care, so that's fine.

"Kylo," Hux says, tinny through the speaker and sounding absolutely frigid, "what the _fuck._ "

"Hux?!" Kylo scrambles to mash the phone against his ear and gets there in time to hear Hux sigh in the way that he does when he's being really, really patient because he knows that murder can still get the death penalty in California.

"You _are_ drunk. You called me, you idiot."

Oh. He'd just been trying to. Like. Look at Hux's contact page. The photo in Kylo's phone is of him at a sandwich place and he looks annoyed in it, because he didn't know why the fuck Kylo was pulling his phone out and didn't like being photographed anyway. But the light had been amazing, and he has his sunglasses up on his head pushing his hair back, and it makes him look like a casual movie star. It's really good.

Kylo should probably have deleted it by now.

"Uh," he says, sitting up _way_ too fast and then having to try and sound like his tongue works properly and his head isn't spinning. "Yeah. Kinda. Sorry, the phone was an accident, sort of. You're—working?"

"Hmm," Hux says. Kylo isn't sure if he's trying to decide whether he's really working or if he's trying to decide whether he's going to talk to Kylo. He'd been sharp before, but now his voice is very quiet. He lives in a condo, and maybe the walls are thin. Kylo doesn't really know. Hux only let Kylo sleep over there the one time. "I am. Although I was about to _stop_ working, as it's the middle of the goddamn night. What have you been drinking?"

"Mostly. Um. Vodka?" He doesn't sound very sure even to himself. "Yeah, Screwdrivers. Then shots but not, mm, not that many?" He can hear Hux breathing. Even his breathing sounds annoyed. But maybe it also sounds like he's laughing, a little. "You can, uh, you can laugh at me. That's okay. 'S kinda funny."

Hux snorts, which isn't the same thing. "Where are you right now, Kylo?"

"Home. Living room floor... rug."

"Ah, yes, just where you should be, then. Are you planning to sleep there?"

"No," Kylo mumbles, feeling suddenly sullen. He _might_. It's not Hux's business anymore.

"Get up, then," Hux says, still so quiet he's almost whispering. God forbid the neighbours overhear him having a _conversation_. But then he waits for Kylo to do it. So Kylo does. "There you are. Now do us both a favour and go get a glass of water. You know you'll hate yourself in the morning, otherwise."

"Sorta hate myself already now."

"I'm sure." Now Hux _does_ sound like he's laughing. Or like he wants to, anyway, if the neighbours weren't probably going to hear it; like his eyes have gone all crinkly at the corners. He wasn't _always_ mean to Kylo. Not _every_ time he laughed. "Kylo?" Hux says, and for a second Kylo thinks that maybe he accidentally _said_ that. He's not so drunk he doesn't know that would be embarrassing.

"Uh. Yeah?" The sullen feeling is gone, and now he just feels kind of scratchy. His throat and maybe his whole insides are like that, and it's partly because he was just at a club, and its partly because Hux is talking to him in his quiet middle-of-the-night voice. His whole history with Hux just feels like one long litany of times Kylo embarrassed himself, lined up one after the other until Hux finally got sick of it.

Hux breathes out. "No, never mind. Did you get the water?"

"Gettin' it. In the kitchen now." Well, he's _almost_ in the kitchen.

"All right. Good," he says, when he hears the tap run on Kylo's end. "Mind that you drink the whole glass. I'm going to hang up now, all right?"

"Yeah. Hux. Yeah, I—" he realizes that he doesn't know where this sentence ends up but it's probably going to be stupid, "—yeah. Okay. 'Night."

Kylo's phone beeps. Call ended: 4 minutes 24 seconds.

He still wishes Hux was here. He'd even take Hux still breathing somewhere down the other end of a phone line.

Also, Kylo _is_ horny, damn right, although he'd kind of forgotten for a second in the heart attack of actually talking to Hux on the phone. It occurs to him as he chugs down the entire glass of water that this was probably a good piece of advice, so he refills it.

_Thanksx 4 the water._

It shows as 'read' for a while and Kylo gives up, but then while he's making what he thinks is a very virtuous, if unsteady, attempt at brushing his teeth:

 _You're welcome_. _And your texting is atrocious. I hope you're asleep._

He takes this as advice, too, and passes out face down without even bothering to jerk off.

In the morning, he looks at the text chain with a sense of unreality that isn't _all_ the fault of his hangover. It's not quite a 'sleep well' text. But Hux could have eviscerated him. And he hydrated him instead.

 _Hey—_ Kylo sends, although this probably guarantees that Hux will kill him after all— _I just wanted to say, thanks for real. The water was, um, much needed. Obviously. Sorry I bothered you._

That one stays on 'read' all day.

***

Hux has never drunk-texted anyone in his life. It requires a combination of drunkenness and sociability he doesn't often achieve, and certainly not often at the same time. _Kylo_ was always the one who got drunk and handsy. He was the one who liked to be that way. Hux values his control, both in public and in private. For example, after a hellish workday following a sleepless night he chooses to blame on having been foolish enough to answer his phone at two fifty-six AM and thus having unfortunately fucked up his circadian rhythms and _not_ on Kylo Ren, he breaks the bottle of vodka out of the freezer and pours a generous amount over ice. Decorously, in his own home. He sips from it thoughtfully as he settles into bed, glasses on, paperback at the ready.

Kylo fucking Ren.

It's been half a year, which ought to make the fact that he's suddenly drunk-texting Hux both ridiculous and unbearable. Intolerable. Disrespectful of Hux's time and overpresumptuous of his goodwill.

He's certainly blocked others for lesser offences than having tried to, ugh, _booty call_ him in the middle of the night. As if he'd be thanking Ren for the opportunity to revisit the whole mess again.

And Ren is, frankly, a mess. He always has been one. The thing about Hux and messes is that he cannot abide them. He solves them, or dies trying. Hux hasn't got time for it—honestly can't see how anyone would have time for it, except that the mess came with _Ren,_ as well, and on his own he did have his merits.

For example, Ren has the way he chews on his bottom lip before he says something he's unsure of. Presumably, this is a habit he still hasn't broken. Never mind that he always fucks it up anyway, that lip taken on its own is. Not awful. Also not awful is—if Hux must admit it, this is what he is principally thinking of, and has been since last night—how impossibly _suggestible_ he is. Not just when he's drunk. Although. Hux always had a particular soft fondness for him when he was halfway there. (One that he took great pains to conceal, although Ren was probably too dense or at least too self-absorbed to have noticed anyway.) Ren got so transparent, so reliably dumb with wanting sex, any kind, all kinds, that Hux could wind him up with hardly an effort.

He just had to give Ren a _hint_ , just a little sneak of a taste, and he had all of Ren's attention. It had made it almost worth it, sitting through Friday night after Friday night of awful, sticky nightclubs. He gets more work done now, of course.

He'd assumed Ren was letting someone kinder chew him up and swallow him, now. Someone more deserving of the way he went limp and practically swooning at the littlest tease of positive reinforcement, someone who could give Ren that all the time, whenever Ren needed it.

Hux could have—he could have, once upon a time, before he couldn't anymore—just crooked a finger and had Ren trailing after him, docile and devoted as a horny puppy. After a little liquor, he got that way. Probably, he would get that way for anyone who figured him out. Except it seems he doesn't have anyone at the moment, if he's sat alone on the floor texting Hux at all hours. And what does it say about Hux that he was awake, just thinking of signing out of his google docs? What does it say about him that he texted back, that he picked up? Ren hadn't been reaching out on purpose. He wasn't in his right mind, half slurred on the phone, half sweet like he didn't remember why he shouldn't be sweet with Hux. But Hux had been sober, last night. Had been working late.

The vodka doesn't _help_ with much, although it's sticky-hot in Hux's bedroom, the last throes of a late Autumn hot spell, and the chill feels entirely good in his mouth. Clean. Solvent. He feels like he could use some softening around the edges, sometimes. Something to dissolve him a little. It's—he knows he's unbearable. He's unbearable even to himself. The unfortunate side effect of the softening, which he should have predicted—

—Which he did predict. He can afford a moment of honest with himself, surely. Here alone, only himself to judge. He crawled into bed with a glass of vodka precisely _to_ think of Ren. It's not an avoidance tactic. He wants to be fuzzy enough in his own head, in his own pin-straight, clean-lines bedroom, to think about Ren.

He doesn't want to feel guilty when he wriggles out of his jeans and gets under the sheets with the lamp on. Clean sheets. He does—he does want to _feel_. Well. What's wrong with some personal time? With letting things go a bit blank when he touches himself; letting everything go slow like the ceiling fan shadows across his wall.

It feels _good_. He breathes deeply and feels like his lungs inflate properly for the first time in a long bloody time.

Ren's sheets always smelled like sunshine, like only line-dried cotton could. Hux misses that, of all stupid things. Ren lives in the fuckoff-huge suburban house that had been his grandfather's, right on the metro line and rent free of _course_ his entire life because he'd inherited when he was barely old enough to remember. Even in a service job, he had the financial luxury to live his horrendous, organic, line-dried-laundry hipster lifestyle. Hux tried not to begrudge him that. But it's hard when his own pillowcase smells like Gain and he _remembers_ with his whole body how scratchy-soft Ren's billion-count bed was. And the smell of him sweating all over it but—he liked clean things, Ren did. Not always tidy, far from it, but clean. He always changed the sheets, before. If he knew Hux was coming over. And he'd change them the next day, too; whine about doing the laundry but do it anyway. His big bed had just been so—so fucking nice. From a purely sensory, tactile perspective. Hux was thinking now that he could have gotten off just on stretching himself out there with the morning sun through the blinds and _breathing_.

And then Ren would run one sleepy knuckle along his back, gentle as a kiss, and it was on _._

He's never had that anywhere else.

He wouldn't qualify what he's doing here as fantasizing, exactly. Only, he's been trying _not_ to think of Ren for quite a while, and maybe that has translated into working himself rather thin. It's been a long time since he's taken anything like this for himself.

But he remembers how Ren could be, so clearly. Infuriating; enthusiastic when Hux longed to be left in peace, sulky when Hux would have wanted a companion. But also—sweating himself into a lather trying to drag Hux onto the dance floor, burning hot and kind of unpleasantly tacky to the touch with sweat and who knew what else and breathless with exertion and laughing. Wanting to pour all of that into Hux of all people. When Hux was usually still in the booth with his collar buttoned up, feeling so starchy and out of place that it seemed like the most improbable kind of mistake that Kylo had managed to drag him there at all. The dance floor, when Hux felt like that, was impossible. So: impossible all of the time.

Ren was easy to distract from that, though, because he was easy to want. Hux wanted him all to himself, when he was in a happy lather like that. And there was nothing Ren wanted more than to get more lathered. Another curious line of serendipity between them.

He's thinking about Ren drunk because Ren had been well past it last night. But Ren sober was just the same, even stranger somehow. The difference being, of course, that a sober Ren had better sense than to call Hux up now after months of silence, asking for something Hux couldn't give. Though Hux had almost wanted to. Though he'd wanted to even last night, even annoyed—which is _more_ annoying—he'd thought about staying on the line, or about getting into his car at three o-fucking-clock in the morning. He can admit that to himself now; there's vodka. Not nearly _enough_ vodka, but some things must be allowed to slide sometimes. Surely.

Just between Hux and himself. Maybe thinking about it is all right.

He'd touch Ren as slow as either of them could bear. He could have done it to him _anywhere_ , done _anything_ , and Ren would have lolled right along with it. Dangerous. There was something so absolutely trusting about Ren, out of his mind, trusting Hux to just. Handle it. Handle _him_ , get him somewhere relatively safe and then get him _off_. He's sure, all those times, Ren could have pulled himself together. Like he'd pulled himself together last night, gotten home, gotten hydrated. He just... didn't. He leaned into Hux instead, went wherever Hux hauled him. He had a way of leaning his head back so Hux could get at him better. His throat was a weakness he gladly exposed. Hux supposed it was just a particularly erogenous zone for him, but it always felt like an invitation for Hux to consume him completely. It wasn't that Ren didn't participate, when he got like this and just needed to be taken to hand. It was just that all of his participation was focused on pulling Hux _in_ , getting him closer, and then keening encouragement while Hux's proximity, thus achieved, seemingly overloaded whatever was left of his hindbrain.

More often than not, Hux had to hold him up, after. He would just drape himself there and smile so stupid back at Hux that it felt _dangerous_. It felt contagious. It felt like he was Hux's responsibility to neaten and care for.

Without exactly remembering the part where he falls asleep, Hux wakes up the next morning with a headache he thinks is a low-grade hangover. He goes in to the office anyway, of course, as he would with any hangover of any provenance. This one feels a bit like it's Kylo Ren's fault for the second day in a row, which is particularly bitter. By the time he's catching the metro home, though, he is breathing very carefully and very shallowly through waves of nausea that should not be getting _worse_. Except that they are. His headache feels like it's spread to the rest of his body via his spine. It feels poisonous.

He makes it home without vomiting, barely, and calls his secretary—at home, which he never does for the simple reason that Hux knows he'll answer—to say that he won't be in tomorrow and he'd better reschedule everything for the next few days. It's tempting to add that he may want to start planning Hux's funeral now, but he's concerned that he might actually do that, too. And then Hux is at home, alone, feeling like hell and staring at the blue light of his phone, which is making his eyeballs hurt even worse than the rest of his head already hurts. Somehow.

Right. Ibuprofen, maybe some toast. Then sleep for the next fourteen years.

The last person who texted him was Ren, two days ago.

_You kept me awake half the night and I got the flu. You bastard._

Ren must be at home alone too, because he texts back right away: _you dying?_

The presence of any appropriate punctuation at all says he's sober—which, it's barely five PM and as far as Hux knew when they were together Ren wasn't an _alcoholic_ , not even close, even if he did like to frequent unspeakably sticky nightclubs now and then. He had _better_ be sober. But the ambiguous capitalization says that he is, one, still atrocious and, two, possibly does actually still hope Hux will die, now that he's considering it soberly. Hux is still weighing over how to parse it when Ren sends a follow-up text of a single green-faced barf emoji. It's animated.

 _You're atrocious in every way_.

There's a longish pause. Ren doesn't have read receipts on, but Hux has enough time while he hauls himself to the medicine cabinet in search of painkillers to almost regret sending anything to him at all. He's frankly not sure why he did. Certainly, he won't apologize for his brusque tone; it's not as though it _isn't_ Ren's fault. And his head fucking _hurts_. He's probably compromised.

_I mean. I was gonna ask if you needed, like stuff from the drugstore or anything. Soup._

_But I guess you've got that under control probably._

Hux considers this as he turns the brightness all the way down on his phone. Bedtime. Definitely bedtime. He'll just—sleep now, make toast later. Regret involving Ren sometime in the future after he's lived through this plague. _Yes, it is under control, thank you. I can procure my own soup._ Actually, he isn't so sure that he owns anything remotely _like_ soup, but that's what grocery delivery is for. Will be for. Tomorrow. He lets himself topple sideways on the couch, tugging the throw draped over the back down to cover himself haphazardly while he does it. The throw pillow is scratchy under his cheek but the leather of the couch is blessedly cool in a way that, unlike everything else, doesn't currently hurt.

 _Thanks,_ he sends on an afterthought, one eye cracked blearily back open to type it. He deleted every picture of Ren in his phone's album—which was only about four and all of them horrible: Ren in an orange Halloween wig; Ren's ass at the beach, comically covered in sand; Ren asleep face down on an Amtrak fold-out tray table on the way home from a weekend in San Francisco. But it turns out he didn't delete Ren's contact photo. It's him in a ridiculous trucker hat, taken on the same beach excursion as the sandy shorts photo, just a closeup of his profile turned up into the sunshine, eyes shut. His nose looks enormous in it. They were leaning over the edge of the Venice boardwalk and Hux doesn't know now why he took it; he doesn't normally whip his cell phone out for photos. Maybe in revenge for some sneaky photo Ren had taken of him first. Ren looks happy in it.

Ren doesn't, on first meeting, give the impression that he's ever anything but totally serious and a little morose. It's mostly an aesthetic choice; he thinks it's _artistic._

Ren had wanted to take Hux out of town to the de Young Museum, just because he liked him and also liked art museums. Made a weekend of it. It had been, against all of Hux's worst suspicions about art and museums and San Francisco and the Amtrak network: nice.

Hux _dreams_ about how bad his headache is.

***

The next afternoon, Kylo considers:

Are they text friends now? Does Hux... _have_ text friends? He never seemed to, before, when Kylo would have known, although he always texted Kylo back promptly enough. He's a very punctual person. Sometimes he'd even text Kylo first, which Kylo frankly thought was because Hux wanted some dick.

That's the problem, right? Hux wanted some dick and for the trains to run on time; he wanted his cat and his job and his nice, clean life, and then Kylo on his knees for him on weekends. Well, and at other times. And sometimes it was Hux on his knees. And sometimes there was no kneeling required, just them sprawled out all over each other in Kylo's bed on a rare Sunday morning when Hux _wasn't_ sending five hundred emails from home on his day off just to gain some nonexistent tactical advantage over everyone else in his office who only worked six days a week. It's no one's fault that he didn't want what Kylo wanted.

Kylo works five days a week, which is the normal amount. He'd told Hux that—what a _normal_ work week looked like—one time, kind of near the end. Kind of near the last straw. Maybe he'd yelled it, too, which was bad. Hux had curled his lip, not even like he was being mean, just like he was totally disgusted with Kylo and maybe with everything and just... gone to work anyway. _Who the fuck aspires to_ normal _?_ That's what he'd said. To Kylo, on the way out.

Kylo. Kylo did, Kylo _does_. He holds down a _normal goddamn job_ as a gallery attendant and three years ago, yeah, that was fucking aspirational, thank you very much. Hux _knows_ that he's a disaster. Hux knew. That was the problem, or one of the problems, Kylo guesses.

Actually, wait—he experiences a stab of worry— _are_ they text friends? They aren't _friends_ friends, that's for sure. And Hux doesn't seem like he would. Well. Do that kind of thing. He's a bridge-burner. But... Kylo considers again the improbability of Hux not only having, one, admitted that he needed to take a day off work, but then, two, having _texted Kylo about it_. He scrolls back up through the message chain from yesterday. Is it, like, cancer? Did Hux say what was actually _wrong_ with him? He said the flu but is that... code? For something?

Kylo can admit that he's fixating because he's trying to procrastinate texting his mom back. Self-awareness like this is something he's been working a lot on. Both personally and also, like, with his therapist. The Leia Organa text thread sits at the top of the screen, three messages unopened from this morning. All of them were definitely about whether or not he was planning on coming home for Thanksgiving this year, and how there's a great seat sale for flights right now, and how she's sure his boss would give him the time off. (He's not, he doesn't care, and yes, his boss would, as if Kylo gives a shit.) Hux thought it was weirdly hilarious that she was in his phone with her whole name. Like a business contact, he said, but then what the hell did he know about it anyway? Hux has probably never texted his dad in his entire life. They haven't spoken in something like fourteen years, so _Hux_ probably needs a therapist, too. Hux's dad had probably taught him never to get one. Actually. That argument might work: just point out to Hux that his shitty dad would have _hated_ it if any son of his ever actually talked to anyone about his problems and bang, Hux would find a way to get on Dr Phil or some shit and talk therapy it out in front of the entire world.

_so are you dead yet? Soup offer is still a go._

_Shouldn't you be working? On alert against master art thieves and sticky-fingered toddlers?_

_I was on the weekend shift, so. Got today and tomorrow off._

_Ah._

Kylo catches himself grinning at his phone. Hux is at his Hux-est over text. Kylo doesn't even know where the hyphen _is_ on a phone keyboard and Hux uses it when he's probably dying of meningitis. This was the key irony of their relationship, in text message form. They broke up for a lot of reasons, and some of them were because they stopped liking each other, but also, that doesn't mean that Kylo doesn't _like_ Hux. He's down to be text friends. Friends-friends, even, if this somehow turns out to be an option.

_I'll bring you some stuff. Unlock your door and go take a nap or whatever. your building has a doorman, right?_

_And let you wake me by barging in like a home invader? Just use the buzzer. That's what it's there for. Please._

The absence of an actual argument gives Kylo a momentary relapse of real worry. Maybe this _isn't_ paranoia. Maybe Hux is dying alone with his cat.

_Don't die alone with your cat._

_i'm serious._

_I read a book about it. They'll eat you after like two days. Starting with the face._

No response to any of this. Hux is either dead already, doesn't think any of it merits a response, or has taken someone's advice for once and is napping. Kylo has a few guesses about which one of these is most likely.

The Jewish deli down the block makes a better-than-decent chicken noodle soup and sells it by the gallon to re-heat at home. The back wall is papered with paparazzi photos of, like, Tom Selleck in board shorts and Jennifer Aniston with no makeup on buying bagels. This is where Kylo is, standing in line behind the 2 PM stroller mom coffee crowd, when his phone buzzes and Hux does text back.

_I thought you didn't work weekends?_

_Summer interns went back to school. Changed my availability._

Not that his boss had asked him to change it. But he likes it at the gallery, and this makes it easy for them to schedule him, and... he can. There's nothing in particular that he does that needs to be done on a weekend. So why not.

When he opens the door for Kylo and his chicken soup, Hux actually does look like shit, for Hux. Which is to say that his hair is faintly messed up at the back like he really _was_ taking a nap, and the circles under his eyes are a sallow purple-green instead of just the normal amount of no-vacation-ever grey. He's staring.

Hux also looks like someone who Kylo took to bed off and on, and then _on_ and on, whenever he could get it, whenever Hux had time for him, for almost a whole year and who Kylo still misses pretty fucking badly. Misses fucking pretty badly. Whatever. Kylo would still hit that, even with the flu and looking tired as hell. Hux looks. He looks good. Fuck him anyway, he looks good even in grey sweat pants, with the flu. Kylo feels like an idiot with a hole in his jeans, because that's what he is.

Shit. This was _such a weird thing for Kylo to have done._ And Hux definitely knows it.

"Oh," Hux says eventually. Croaks, kind of. "You're actually here."

"Yeah, uh. I mean, I know where you live, so." Fucking, _obviously_. He hefts his plastic bag of cargo. "Soup? You sound like crap."

"Thank you," Hux says and reaches out to take it from him like the soup is what he's saying thank-you for, even though he sounds entirely sarcastic. At least Kylo didn't say that he _looked_ like crap. Hux is, in addition to being gorgeous at all times and in all circumstances no matter how virus-ridden, also vain as shit.

Until he forgets to be.

Which is almost instantly, when Kylo can convince him into bed. When Kylo _could_ convince him into bed. Kylo is going to stop thinking about having sex with him.

This is _not someone Kylo has sex with anymore._

Hux just—it's tough because they're just standing here and Kylo _knows_ this about Hux and—he has this cold-as-hell front and he can keep it up when it suits him. Like right now. Like all night, when he was teasing Kylo with it like he wasn't going to eat Kylo alive later and possibly literally also suck his cock. (The main part of the problem that Kylo's working through right now is that Kylo's cock remembers that part very clearly. It's worse than unfortunate.) But Hux _likes_ having sex. Gives it his whole, unselfconscious attention. Even though he's probably the most self-conscious person Kylo has ever known, quite possibly even including himself.

"This is... quite a bit of soup." Still sarcastic.

"Any time. Um. Do you... can I do anything?" No, nope, no, don't act like an insane person, Kylo. Too late. And also, _as if_ Hux would let anyone else do anything for him, ever. "Otherwise, uh, I should get going to work, so."

"Thank you, no. I think this should sustain me. For um, several days." It really is a lot of soup. Hux is looking at him like he's insane; that's not Kylo projecting, that's just a fact.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

"Uh. Okay. See you later, I guess."

When Kylo shuts Hux's door behind himself, his brain clunks back on. He fucking only _already told_ Hux he wasn't working. But after a second, he realizes it probably doesn't matter much. That shit was undeniably weird either way, now that he's actually gone and done it. It's fine if Hux thinks he's some kind of maniac now. He might be one. And also he knows Hux appreciates a clean exit, so. Whatever.

***

Hux's secretary texts him later that night to confirm: Is he alive? Will he be at work tomorrow? There's a lurch and then a stomp in Hux's stomach between when his phone buzzes and when he picks it up to see who the fuck is waking him up from his sweaty half-sleep. Not Kylo. And then he wakes up fully and he's not sure why it _would_ have been Kylo. Frankly it's unbelievable that it was Kylo at all, ever.

Actually, he's almost grateful to have been woken from the half dream, half technicolor doze he'd been wandering through. Formless now, it had seemed vaguely dreadful at the time. Nevertheless he almost texts his secretary back something as awful as he feels, like _who the fuck wants to know_. But, well, Snoke probably wants to know. So.

Is this what he owes to his employer? Ass always on the line, whether or not he feels like hell. It's a foreign-sounding thought in Hux's head. Something _Kylo_ would say, like he's only just now thought of destroying the horrors of capitalism upon which their lives are founded, and he's thought it up all by himself. Most days it doesn't feel so horrifying. Hux _likes_ what he does. He supposes that maybe Kylo does, too, in that his position as gallery attendant keeps him in pretentious band t-shirts and lets him daydream for hours at a time. And he _likes_ museums. Hux would be bored as hell. He's bored as hell now, and he's only been home sick for one day.

Nominally conscious now, he exerts a monumental effort on aching joints and jellied legs and makes it as far as his own kitchen. He reheats the rest of the soup vat. It has to be said, it _is_ rather good. Just the steam off of it seems somehow wholesome.

His fucking _secretary,_ the man he _pays_ to bring him shit, didn't bring him soup. The only person who cares if he lives or dies is... probably no one, realistically.

_Hey,_ Kylo texts a few days later, Saturday mid-morning. _Are you feeling any better?_ And then a minute later: _Also... i didn't send you anything weird last night, right?_

 _I am. Much. I'm sure it was the soup that did the trick._ Right after he hits the send button, Hux _knows_ this is too much. The wrong response for who and where they are. He scrambles to double-text, to return the focus Kylo's embarrassment or whatever that is before his own. _Wild night last night? How are YOU feeling?_

Which is not—fuck, it's hardly better. Well, he sounds like a concerned grandmother rather than like he's flirting—which he is _not_ , either of those things, but he supposes Kylo knows him well enough to know he's not the grandmotherly type so that's marginally reassuring.

_Uh. not really? Nobody to go out with. Everybodys like already out of town for the holiday. I just—had a few at home. Woke up with my text drafts open._

_Glad I didn't wake you. haha_

_Christ_ , Hux texts, _I was at the office all hours last night. Making up for this week. If you'd sent me a dick pic at work, I'd have murdered you and then blocked you._

It's a joke. Mostly. Kylo committed many indignities during their time together, but he had never once done anything as crass as texting Hux unsolicited nudes. But there's a very, very long pause, so long that Hux actually types out and then hits send on _Ha ha ha._

 _Um,_ Kylo sends. And then—a photo. Like _He's_ joking. Except the photo is Kylo, or rather Kylo from gorgeous but badly framed mid-nipple down, in the gold late-night light of his bedside lamp, spilled out on that huge, decadent bed that Hux misses so badly. And he's _not_ nude. He's wearing boxer briefs. Plain black ones, which is what he's always worn as far as Hux knows. But the photo's taken with his right hand, and his left hand has wandered, long fingers just edging underneath the waistband like he's... going it slow. He's totally, completely, obviously hard in his pants.

 _sorry sorry sorry!!_ Kylo sends, before Hux can say anything at all or even process what he's looking at. _That was a joke because you were joking and like I woke up with it in my drafts folder which is the WORST and i thought that was funny but I shouldn't have sent it_

_That was weird. that was super weird._

_Don't block me._

_Like I thought it was funny and it's nothing you haven't seen before and so I thought maybe youd laugh but I shouldn't have sent it._

_DOIN'T KILL ME_

_Kylo Ren,_ Hux texts, Saturday morning at quarter to noon with fingers that aren't shaking because he hasn't finished his third coffee yet, _I am going to kill you. What are you doing tonight._

_Tonight?_

Hux is fully aware that this is a mistake. Unlike almost all of Ren's worst mistakes, at least as far as this maddening text exchange goes, this is a _fully sober_ mistake and therefore—therefore there's really not call for that accusatory question mark that Ren has just sent him. Fuck's sake. Ren's sent him a photo of himself masturbating, and not last night when he might have had an excuse for it, either. He's sent it just now. In daylight. Right there on Hux's phone where he can _still see it_. While _also_ , unfortunately, sober.

There are so many, many reasons to regret this. But Ren doesn't have to question it as if Hux isn't sure.

Hux is very sure it doesn't matter much, not to the parts of him that are _looking at Kylo Ren with his hand down his pants._ Which is all of him.

 _Look,_ Hux types. He's about to send it with no idea what the next text after it is going to be, but Ren beats him to it.

_I'll be home. I mean. I am home._

_If you want to come over._

_"Just—just don't even. Hux. Just don't fucking come here if you don't—if you can't—"_

_"Right. You're right. For once. I_ cannot _. I won't."_

It's almost funny, how Hux can remember this final screaming match exactly. He can recall almost every detail—well, he's always had excellent aural retention. Among other things. But there's no _nouns_ in the conversation, when he runs through it again. He can't for the life of him, not for all the three AM hours he's spent awake hearing it over and over _,_ remember what the hell it is he couldn't do.

Maybe that's not so strange either.

There were—a lot of things. That Kylo asked for. That Hux could not or would not do. And he shouldn't have to—you shouldn't _have to_ change who you are, fundamentally. Not for anyone. Especially not for a significant other, not for someone who was meant to... well. Someone who was meant to take you just as you were.

And Hux was—is—a _lot_ of things. He knows. Too many of them, yes, certainly, and although Hux had thought for a moment, for a span of a few months, a year or a little less than, he'd thought perhaps—

But in the end there they were screaming at each other. There Ren was, screaming at him, don't, don't, _don't fucking come here if you can't._

There Hux was, finally just not screaming back.

Soft-eyed, bullheaded, softhearted Ren with a temper that he'd never bothered keeping for anyone, angry with Hux again. But that part—the angry part—was perhaps not all Ren's fault. If Hux were to look at it honestly, now, from a distance of months. There is a common denominator in every relationship Hux has ever had. It's Hux. He has no deficit of self-esteem—rather the opposite, as everyone who's ever left him can easily attest—but he's clear-eyed enough to understand that it is _him_ they're leaving. His _excellent aural retention_ and his tendency to quote the worst bits right back, fault-finding. His meticulousness even where others might be tempted to let things slide and his sharp tongue and the fact that he just isn't _soft_. Can't be, and doesn't want to be, and it isn't a _problem._ Or: it's not a problem for Hux.

This damned photo of Ren is _so_ soft, though. Out of focus, also, but fundamentally just everything that didn't match up between them. Hux is cold, even right now; in his own living room, in his slippers, his toes are cold. Ren, in this photo, on his own bed, looks warm in a way Hux _remembers_. A way he thinks maybe Ren wanted to feel back from Hux, once, for a little while before Hux wouldn't give that to him and then Ren didn't want it anymore anyhow.

It's a mistake right now at noon and it's not going to be less of a mistake later, not ever, and so Hux texts:

_On my way._

Slams his phone face-down on the coffee table so he can't see the sent text, accusing, while he scrambles to get ready. And jams his phone as deep as he can into his coat pocket when he leaves the house so he doesn't fucking look to see what Ren texts back.

***

_On my way._

Fuck. That's really all Kylo can think. Just, fuck, what the fuck, oh fuck.

He's still wearing the boxers he slept in, which are also the boxers from the photo he just somehow, inexplicably, in what could only be described as a huge, huge fuckup, _sent to Hux_. Fuck! He takes the fastest shower of his life, crams jeans on, and a t-shirt—takes the t-shirt off. Has a crisis, because where's the fucking iron? Where's the fucking _ironing board_ , but it's folded up in the closet where it's supposed to be and the house isn't even that bad—he crams the t-shirt back on, un-ironed, thank god. It would have been excruciatingly embarrassing if he'd ironed his shirt and Hux had realized. Like. The worst. Hux would _know_.

Kylo stuffs every dish into the dishwasher and follows them up with the dirty pots and pans. (There's only, like, two, okay, and they're from making scrambled eggs this morning.) After a frozen second of horror staring at the pizza boxes from last night that he doesn't have time to take out, which stare back at him from the counter, he just sweeps everything else in there too and slams it shut.

It's fine.

He doesn't text Hux back. Any word could be an incrimination, at this point, when he's not one hundred percent sure what the crime is.

The sheets—he changes the sheets, too, and hates himself while he does it. Well, what else is new. So Kylo Ren hates himself. Hux will know that too, more than likely; both of those things.

He sits on the couch after that and really panics, but very, very calmly. Hux is on his way. The fact of the matter is that he's either coming to murder Kylo in cold blood or—

It's going to be fine. They saw each other just the other day. They're text friends now. Maybe Hux wants to watch Netflix or something. Hux doesn't really _do_ Netflix, though; maybe like Planet Earth and some of those Asian food documentaries.

The doorbell rings with Kylo still paralyzed on the couch. Maybe Hux won't have to commit murder because maybe. Maybe Kylo will just have a heart attack right here. He still gets up and answers the door though, even dying. Hux's eyes on his when he actually _opens_ the door say that he knows this. The way Hux fists his hands once, twice, on the doorstep, shoulders held very straight, and then steps forward with his whole body _into Kylo_ , say that he probably knows everything else, too.

It always was the worst thing about him.

They're kissing with the door open, with Hux crashed whole-body into Kylo's chest. With both of their arms still at their sides and Hux still rigid with determination like he's thinking about a punch.

"This is such. Such a fucking—" And Hux doesn't say mistake, doesn't say _disaster_ , because Kylo catches his mouth again before he can. One of them takes a step back. One of them kicks the door shut. Probably Hux.

When Kylo was Hux's, he was _all_ Hux's. When Hux touches him now with an expression on his face like he hates him, Kylo remembers exactly what that _meant_.

It meant Hux's hands on him however Hux wanted, whatever terrible things they'd said to each other just before. It meant the light in Hux's eyes like he was looking at something he wanted so badly he'd have burnt for it. It meant watching Hux make mistake, after mistake, after mistake, when every mistake was Kylo Ren—it meant _being_ a mistake, being Hux's _one_ mistake, because Armitage Hux didn't fuck things up very often.

***

It should worry Hux, it should disgust him—not Ren; Ren tastes of toothpaste mint and his hair in Hux's fingers is still damp at the back of his neck from a shower like he _knew_ he was getting fucked. Motherfucker. Ren already starting to sweat somehow despite the shower still smells _fantastic_ and familiar and—

It's not so easy. It's disgustingly naive on Hux's part that he can close his eyes and feel like it might be.

"Presumptuous." Hux breaks off and just keeps walking forward, pushing Ren back step by step, chest-to-chest, because Ren has a lost look like he isn't catching up. Even though he showered. Even though he sent that horrible photo. Even though he's as warm against Hux as the photo looked. "How can you just—" They're through to Ren's bedroom now, though, and that's one nice thing about a familiar fuck. Convenience. He knows where the bed is without looking away from Ren's terrified face. "You inconvenient, _unbearable_ bastard."

"Hux—" Ren gurgles. Every inch of ground he gives like a retreat, until he hits the bed and goes over backwards and Hux is _pulled down on top_. Because Ren has been clutching at his shoulders the whole time with a death grip. "I'm really— I'm—"

Hux doesn't give a fuck _what_ Ren is. Not even if he's sorry. If he thinks for even one second about what Ren is, he will have to also think about what that makes _him_ , in this scenario. And this scenario is—the lube is exactly where it always was, the same brand that Ren always buys, shoved to the back of the bedside drawer behind a whole bunch of pens, some loose change, and an old harmonica. The harmonica isn't even a new addition; Hux knows its dusty shape by feel and has never asked about it. He's quite sure Ren can't play it. Imagining it is entirely ridiculous and probably impossible. He's doing it anyway, thinking about anything, _anything_ , except for Ren's huge hand cupping his shoulder blade through the back of his sweater and the quick-rabbit way that Ren's breathing has gone. And the absolute relief of Ren sitting up with Hux straddling him and stripping Hux's sweater and the shirt underneath it off of him at last.

Hux showered too.

Hux is sweating out of his skin, and it's _cold_ outside. He can smell both of them, hot and bothered already, and Ren's gorgeous clean sheets, and it's—horrible. Like deja vu and like he's been turned inside-out. Not a terrible simile for what it feels like to take cock from Kylo Ren, honestly. Which. Hux pins him down and _takes it_.

Ren makes them grilled cheese sandwiches wearing a pair of boxer-briefs he fished up off the floor of his closet. The place isn't even a mess, not really; Ren was never a _bad_ housekeeper, only a haphazard one. Knickknacks are everywhere, a confusing hodge-podge of art and memorabilia and lord knows what, but dust-free. The counters are spotless except for the crumbs he's just dropped there. Hux fights down the urge to say something about the boxers anyway, because saying something risks acknowledging that there's a photo of these particular boxers on his own phone, now, and because it was lunchtime when they started and it's long ago gone afternoon and Hux is starving.

"I was almost hoping your kitchen would be a disaster, you know."

"Why?" Ren turns from the stove with a strange quirk in his mouth. Not quite like he thinks this is funny, although Hux was trying to make a joke. He's not sure why he's surprised that Ren feeding him in his own kitchen feels worse than when Ren brought him soup. It _is_ worse. Much. "I know you can't stand—you couldn't. Uh. That was like, one of the things you told me. That you hated when I left the dishes for after dinner, or. Something."

Hux doesn't remember that.

He remembers waking up next to Ren in his own bed slow and late, the one time he'd ever _had_ Ren in his own bed. And then Ren heading home after coffee—after _two_ coffees, lingering—because he had laundry to do before work the next day. Kissing Ren goodbye still half-fuzzy but not from sleep. He remembers that Ren left his coffee cup on the corner of Hux's little kitchen island when he left. It was the corner where Millicent likes to sit to see out onto the balcony; he remembers, also, the delicate, curious forward twitch of her whiskers, inspecting this familiar thing somehow misplaced. The way that suddenly, horribly, Hux—left alone now—had _felt_. A spike of it straight up through the lungs.

"I hate a lax approach to that kind of thing, yes. It's pointlessly careless."

The quirk turns into a dimple, but this bit wasn't a joke. "Yeah," Ren says, a bit hoarse. Maybe just because he hurt his throat on the string of desperate sounds he'd let Hux pull out of him, just earlier, stretched out on top of him. "No, I remember. I actually um." He laughs, also a hoarse sound. Rakes his fingers back through his hair in a fidget. "I shoved everything that was on the counter into the dishwasher like five minutes after you texted me. Like, everything. There's a whole pizza box in there."

Hux opens the dishwasher. It is, unfortunately, true. It doesn't help as much as he'd thought it might, and it helps much less when Hux discovers, as if outside of his own control, that he is taking the box out. He's re-stacking the dishes _properly_ —he knows where the soap is, and has turned the thing on. When he straightens up, he also discovers that Ren is staring at him in apparent horror, or mortification, or something. "Sorry. Ah. I'm—sorry." Hux tries not to choke on the apology, and then realizes too late that this is worse and he should have been trying to choke it back, instead. "It's. Your kitchen is fine. _Was_ fine, too, I'm sure."

It was Hux, of course, who wasn't fine. With almost anything, ever. As Ren well knows, because he just raises his eyebrows and then goes back to flipping cheese sandwiches as though this is an operation which requires his full concentration.

"I always used to clean before you came over, too," Ren says, dishing up. Like this isn't any kind of admission. Well, Hux had always assumed, so perhaps it isn't one. "I mean, not like—I didn't do a great job or anything, probably."

Always clean sheets, though.

They eat four grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches between them at the kitchen counter, not looking at one another while they do it. The dishwasher hums in the background. Ren asks about work. Hux does _not_ ask about Ren's work, or Ren's changed weekend work schedule, or Ren's parents or—they make small talk. It's nearly five o'clock in the afternoon when Hux stacks his plate neatly in the sink on top of Ren's and finally dares to look at the stove clock. Possibly it might be more accurate to say that it's _only_ four-thirty, in that Hux feels like he has made a week's worth of terrible decisions in a surprisingly small span of time. When he turns to Ren with his mouth open to say—well, probably just to say that he ought to be going and to wish Ren a happy Thanksgiving and a good rest of his life, or really anything that might have been remotely appropriate to leaving in order to begin the work of forgetting these bad decisions forever—when he turns to Ren, Ren is turning too. Only he's not turning to talk; Ren catches Hux's mouth with his own and tastes really not very minty at all this time.

And Hux, who has just come twice in short succession after months of—of almost nothing, really, even if he were to include his own hand in that tally, and has just been fed two frankly _spectacular_ grilled cheese sandwiches, is only human. He grabs Ren whole-fisted by the crotch of his boxers, and when Ren groans like a wounded thing, he bites him at the corner of his jaw for the impertinence of letting his mouth go slack. Hauls him bodily back to Ren's own bed, lays them both out, and goads at him until neither of them are even bothering with the pretense of trying to catch their breath. And then stops, dangerously close to spreading his legs for Kylo Ren one more time.

"Hux—" Ren is gasping, scraped-together in a voice that Hux has _missed_ — "Hux, fuck, you— I—"

Nonsense. He always did talk nonsense when he thought he was getting it in. It doesn't matter, because what Hux wants is _that_ spread out for _him_ , exactly the opposite orientation from what they're about four seconds away from falling into again. A third time in half a day—Hux is sore just thinking about it, and although that sounds... so good, really, that he can hardly bear it, even so, it isn't what he's after. So Hux, never accused of failing to chase after his goals, shoves at Ren and rolls them until Ren _gets it_.

"Oh," Ren says, stunned stupid. He squirms a little, under Hux. Shifts his gorgeous thighs apart like he's been bright enough to think of this idea himself. " _Ohh_ -kay, yeah."

Well, the nice thing about Ren—which has not, apparently, changed one bit—is that even if he talks nonsense when he's fucking Hux, he makes up for it when he's _getting_ fucked with how very, _very_ agreeable he can be. If he wasn't already flat on his back, he'd be tripping over himself to get that way now. For Hux.

And even though Hux objectively _isn't_ thinking, and even though this is idiocy of the worst kind, it's nice to think he's still got what it takes.

Flattering, really, the way Ren arches his back—futile but so, so sweet—for more of Hux's fingers. And then, less futilely, for more of _Hux_. It's beguiling, intoxicating, the way Hux can push and push and push and Ren just _takes it_ , eyes gone wide. Mouth open like if it wasn't, he'd have forgotten how to breathe. The sounds he makes— _Christ_. Hux wants to be disdainful. Wants to hurt him when he's vulnerable, rip him open where he's soft. But it's _so_ soft, every breath gone high and begging, wordless but asking Hux for more. And more.

And Hux can't hurt him like this, couldn't hurt him like this, couldn't stop himself from wanting that more and more that Ren's offering so carelessly instead. Couldn't stop this if the choice had been to stop this or die.

It's too early to rule out dying from this anyway. People die from smaller mistakes than this every day.

They'll hurt each other afterwards, instead. Although—he shifts grips, moves _harder_ , until Ren clutches one hand in the sheets so hard his knuckles crack. The other slides up Hux's back, purchaseless, seeking. " _Yes_ ," Hux breathes it into him, all affirmation, all agreement, and Ren comes with a choke like he _is_ hurt. Pets at the back of Hux's neck so thoughtlessly gently, straight through it, that the gasp Hux makes when Ren tightens around him is as thick as a sob in his chest.

And worse, Hux doesn't push him away. He _has_ to push him away, and he still doesn't. It is an abject failure of every instinct for self-preservation Hux has so carefully cultivated.

He falls asleep with his mouth open. Feels his own blinking going slow against Ren's slowing pulse and he knows—he _knows_ —he's doing it, knows it can't be much after six and he can feel sleep pulling syrupy at him anyway. Spent inside Ren, pressed against Ren. Eyelashes sticking-slow against Ren's familiar throat. Don't think of it. He's always fucking tired, never fucking sleeps. Isn't thinking, if he lets this happen. But he's so far down and it feels so sweet that he lets it happen anyhow. Like almost everything he's ever done with Ren. To Ren.

He sleeps for thirteen fucking hours.

***

Hux falls asleep with his mouth open. Like he's fallen asleep mid-scold—there was always _something_. Kylo doesn't especially like being scolded at, can't brush these things off the way he should or the way other people do. So it ends up burning in him until he's all filled up with a scorched-hot resentment that comes boiling out—this is what Kylo has, at various times, tried to explain to his therapist at the same time that he is trying to explain why he doesn't want to talk about his family or—or any of it. He's doing the best he can, is what it boils down to. But she's always still looking at him like she thinks he could do better, if he just _tried_. He _does_ try.

It never quite feels like it's been enough, though.

That was one of the reasons, that feeling. It's not like he doesn't remember it. The other reason was simpler: it was that Hux had left. The main reason.

He'd thought—Hux scolded him, because that's what Hux _does_ , and Kylo shouted back because that's what _Kylo_ does, and then neither of them had to apologize for both being wrong. It was a perfect, complimentary arrangement.

Until Kylo somehow _was_ wrong, and then wrong again, and then _always_ wrong, and Hux wasn't apologizing and Hux wasn't admitting that _he_ was wrong because Hux had decided that, actually, he was right. Kylo guessed. Or at least Hux decided that he was done, and that was it. That was something Kylo couldn't shout against. But sometimes when he's really fucking up, when he _knows_ he is, he just. He wishes. Has wished. That someone was waiting for him to tell him to stop it, and to keep on telling him until he listened. To know why he yelled, to know that it was because he was frustrated, because he was _trying_.

That person had been Hux, too, for a little while.

Not forever.

Well, he doesn't need Hux to tell him that they've fucked up this time. He doesn't even think Hux would disagree that they're both in the wrong. But: Hux still falls asleep with his mouth open against Kylo's chest, a slow-breathing, solid sleep and—

Kylo had thought he was just fucked-out but then he looks at Hux, gone heavy on top of him, and at how Hux actually looks. He's always so damn put-together, even on his way to completely throw Kylo's life all to hell just when it might have almost been all right again. But today—he doesn't look much better today than he did when he'd had the flu. He looks almost as exhausted; a tiredness beyond the usual perpetual aura of being tired of everything. And Kylo has woken up next to Hux before but he's never really _fallen asleep with Hux._ It's always been Kylo, sacked out first, even the single time they slept at Hux's. Sometimes Hux would hum something like permission to Kylo, on the way down, when he felt like being kind. Sometimes he'd just read something on his phone when he figured Kylo was done for. He'd never _minded_ Kylo passing the fuck out, or it hadn't seemed like he did; he'd stayed the night plenty of times. He'd just... never gone to sleep first. Not once. Now that Kylo thinks about it, maybe he spent the night and didn't really sleep. Sleep might be the one thing that Armitage Hux is just absolutely terrible at.

He sleeps now like he _needs_ to. Like it's an accident that even all his endless forward-planning could not prevent.

This—this exhilarating strangeness of Hux gone so soft against him. It isn't bad. It's tearing a hole in Kylo's chest right through his breastbone, tenderly, slowly, making him think about everything that has been wrong and that could be wrong again, but it doesn't feel _bad._ It's going to feel so bad in the morning. A terrible injury. Like cliff jumping when he's pretty sure there's no lake at the bottom: the free fall feels like flying, and the landing is just going to fucking hurt.

Kylo knows this, and he closes his eyes even though it's only dinnertime and even though it's still light outside, and sleeps with Hux anyway. Like the worst idiot in the entire world. Like Hux could ever, ever have been his to save.

***

Dental anaesthesia.

Hux has had seven different therapists—a number which remains strictly between himself and his health insurance; certainly that he's had even one is not something to _admit_ —and now he has no therapist whatsoever because nothing has ever made him feel better when he can feel his lungs start to tighten up. He wakes up in Kylo Ren's bed with the sunlight coming in at the opposite slant. Long past sunrise, and he doesn't remember the sunset or Kylo falling asleep or even that one of them must have rearranged things so that the duvet covers them both except for where Ren's kicked it off of one of his legs. This is _exactly_ the kind of thing that should be ratcheting him towards a terrible anxiety. He breathes deeply, slowly, measuring and waiting for the catch when his throat starts to constrict. Ren snuffles, turns his face further into the pillow. Outside the half-open blinds, in his yard, a tree branch rattles as a squirrel jumps across it. 

The last time Hux _didn't_ feel anxious, it was because the dental hygienist handed him two tiny, white benzo pills and a little paper cup of water to wash them down with. And ten minutes later he knew pretty well what was happening—he was falling asleep with someone's fingers in his mouth—but also it was entirely inevitable and therefore impossible to care. Nothing to be ashamed of. Falling asleep next to Kylo Ren last night is somehow the same, and is indistinguishable from waking up next to him this morning and feeling completely better.

That throat-tightening, constricting feeling never comes. Not even after he's lain there half an hour. He slides out of the bed with incredible care anyway, and Ren doesn't stir an inch.

So Hux picks his clothes up and leaves, like he would leave any other one night stand. He walks past the coffee shop on the corner with the pallet furniture and the fair trade trinkets for sale. Well, he walks past it and then he turns back and goes in, because he slept so alarmingly well that he feels like he might still be sleeping. This place makes a good flat white, he remembers. He also remembers that Ren likes the multigrain bagels with dill cream cheese, yes, even in the morning, as if anything that tasted of dill could be a breakfast food. It's eight-thirty in the morning—Kylo is probably barely conscious, if at all. But. Maybe he's noticed that Hux is gone. Whether or not that would be reason enough to drag him out of bed and into getting on with his day is debatable.

Hux—

Hux orders a flat white and a fucking bagel, and a fucking dark roast that he pours three sugar packets into, and he walks back out the way he came. _All the way_ the way he came. And then he feels stupid because he doesn't have a key to Kylo's front door and he never fucking did. He has to ring the bell. He thinks about not ringing the bell. Coffee is coffee even when abominably sweetened, after all. Hux could drink both cups. But Hux never eats breakfast and it would be a horrible waste of a (horrible, dill-riddled) bagel.

"Hux?" Kylo doesn't sound like he even believes it's him, peering through the crack in the door. He does sound awake, though, so. He must have noticed.

"I, uh." Hux doesn't _eat_ breakfast. "I brought breakfast."

This is such a—such a fucking mistake, for so _many_ reasons, and all of them are the same reasons he should never have texted Kylo back, not even once. Except worse.

Kylo opens the door wide with his eyebrows raised like he'll believe it when he sees it, but then when there actually is a paper bag and it actually does probably have bagels in it, his eyebrows just climb higher.

***

Hux came back.

That's all Kylo can process, really, and if he's honest he isn't quite processing that. His brain, his body, his _everything_ feels like sludge, like he was unconscious for days instead of just one early night. But that's definitely Hux. And it's Hux with a peace offering that smells like _coffee_. And—

The first time they met.

Usually that's something that couples, like, reminisce about. Even if it's not a romantic story; even if it's one of those, God, I met him at a party at his place but his roommate was the one who invited me and I didn't know _anyone_ and I could not _believe_ the amount of mould that there was in the back of the refrigerator in that place. Cue fond laughter, eye-rolls, the mock-heated disclaiming that he was in a dread tupperware war with his roommate which was definitely _totally justified at the time_. Agreement from everyone else at the Thanksgiving table that this will definitely be the anecdote that makes it into the wedding speech.

Well. Armitage Hux doesn't _do_ Thanksgiving, Kylo knows. He definitely does not do marriage. Kylo doesn't do marriage either, and he hasn't been home for Thanksgiving in something like six years. Seven? No, probably six, probably just before Rey graduated college. Although his mom invites him, futilely, every time.

Armitage Hux _does_ do graduating from college. He does academic pursuits of all kinds, he probably thought—

No, he definitely _didn't_ think he was getting an academic, when he got Kylo. The opposite actually; for some reason, he thought Kylo worked at a fucking weird hipster gastropub. Well. Maybe college hipsters technically counted as academics; Kylo wasn't in a position to know and that wasn't the point, then or ever.

Kylo had been walking to the bathroom; _that's_ how they'd met. He'd had to piss, like, really badly, because he was getting dinner with his mom while she was in town and he'd been, honestly, partly sort of afraid that if he tried to excuse himself she'd think he was flat-out leaving for some reason—even though for once he wasn't _especially_ angry with her—and mostly sort of afraid that she was so absorbed in her own life-lesson lecture that she'd just keep talking to him even though he wasn't sitting there anymore. Anyway. He was trying to edge delicately in between the stupidly tiny tables, not succeeding at all. Trying to mind his business without knocking over any chairs, when someone tugged on his sleeve. Sharply.

 _Someone._ As if—even if he's the one telling the story, Kylo's certain he won't be able to disguise the fact that he walked to the bathroom _that way_ , the obviously long way where he had to squeeze through little tables made out of artisanally-sliced reclaimed rainforest hardwood or whatever the fuck because he'd wanted to see if the redhead (the back of whose neck Kylo had been staring at the whole time he was sort-of listening to his mom) was as hot as Kylo was secretly starting to suspect he was.

And fuck, fuck, fucking _shit_ , he _was_ , only he pulled on Kylo's sleeve and _glared_ at him and said, "Can we _kindly_ get the bill?" So fucking pissed and British. Kylo balked back, pulled his arm back, and said, "Can you kindly get a _waiter?_ " in exactly the same tone. _Kindly_ meant: please choke and die.

And Hux had sneered at him instead of apologizing and let Kylo's sleeve go like he was granting some kind of imperial boon. Also like he'd just upgraded his opinion of Kylo from 'vegan waiter' to 'escaped baboon who first rolled in his own shit and then stumbled into a restaurant _,'_ which was already most of what Kylo felt like. Like. Almost all of the time. He hated being looked at that way. He'd hated it, and he'd hated Hux, and he'd hated his fucking cauliflower rice and left hoping that Hux had, too.

He'd also had a dentist appointment at ten o'clock the next morning, a Saturday. He'd sat down in the waiting room without looking left or right because he was _thinking about shit_ , all right. And then he _had_ looked left, and there was Hux in the chair right next to his. Absolutely glowering.

Kylo had just kind of stared at him for a second. It was hard to keep thinking about _anything_ , let alone his depressing life, when somebody was looking at you and they were _that hot_. And when you were having the terrible realization that you'd been kind of a dick last night about what was just a dumb misunderstanding at a shitty vegan restaurant. Gastropub. Whatever, it could have happened to anyone. No one's fault really except that he was _so busy being a dick about it that he'd temporarily forgotten that he was being a dick to the hottest person he'd ever seen,_ who had also, although it'd gotten kind of lost in the whole being a dick part of things, _touched Kylo on the arm_. Well, yanked, but—Kylo was sunk.

He had a type. It was pretty people who were pretty much incredibly mean to him.

"I'm, um, not a waiter," Kylo said. In the dentist's waiting room. Fifteen hours later. "Or a vegan. Or, uh. Sorry. I hope you didn't tip them, my food was shit."

Hux had gone from glaring to _staring_ , as though Kylo's relative status had changed from baboon to squid alien and he was deciding whether it was worse or not. Hux opened his mouth to say—

"Mister Ren?" The hygienist stepped into the waiting room, beating Hux to it, and Kylo said, "Here," like someone was taking attendance. And then he stopped having an out-of-body experience just in time to realize that he was an absolute fucking moron. So he'd gone and gotten his teeth cleaned without saying another word. Hux had closed his mouth when the hygienist showed up, Kylo's apology neither accepted nor rejected.

The dentist appointment sucked. Obviously. All dentist appointments were literally the worst.

But then.

Then. Then, after, while Kylo was waiting for his insurance direct bill to clear, Hux came back out into the main office doing that thing with his tongue over his new, clean teeth that everybody does on the way out of a dentist appointment. Saw Kylo at the desk. And froze for just long enough that Kylo saw his step hitch and watched him breathe in and decide to walk over instead of hanging back. Oh, holy shit, he was gorgeous. And not _quite_ glaring. Kylo had been _so_ right about the back of his head last night.

"I should apologize," Hux said when he got to the desk. Clean accent like a fall afternoon. Noticeably not actually apologizing. The receptionist was copying whatever insurance plan number from one part of Kylo's file to another part or... something. With a fax machine. He was not paying either of them any attention.

"No," Kylo said, "that's—" but before he could supply whatever a normal person would probably, Kylo thought, have said here, Hux said—

"Let me get dinner? Something with some goddamn meat." And he was fishing his phone out of his back pocket and flicking the lock screen open and _handing it to Kylo_ , with the _new contacts screen open,_ fuck, fuck. Watching Kylo, who was now having an entirely different and much more frightening out-of-body experience, manage to tap his whole name in with his giant thumbs without fucking it up. One thing about Hux—the first thing Kylo ever learned about Hux—he knew how to watch somebody with _intent_.

The receptionist smirked. Kylo literally could not have given one single fuck less about him or what he thought. Kylo didn't even remember signing the insurance invoice. He didn't remember the whole bus ride home. Kylo couldn't feel any of his fingertips, let alone his thumbs to type with them, as if they'd been singed by contact with nothing but Hux's _phone_.

It's all Kylo can do, now, to let Hux and Hux's bagel into his home and not to imagine there's intent there. Or even for a second allow himself to think about what that intent would be or—

The second time they'd met—it had been Hux with a peace offering. It was always Hux who walked back, until he didn't. Kylo has never walked away in the first place, really, for all the times he's told Hux to _get out._

 _"Fuck off, Kylo Ren,"_ is what Hux had said, finally, not yelling anymore, not snapping. Only then he'd left Kylo's house himself and just never, ever come back.

Two weeks before that, he'd let Kylo into his immaculate, thin-walled condo. He'd sucked Kylo off in in the shower, slow and then ravenous and then like he'd _die_ if Kylo didn't also touch him to get him off; and then also like he was determined to just keep twitching out of Kylo's grip every time he tried to haul Hux up to _get_ him off. As though maybe he'd rather keep his mouth on Kylo until they both died instead. Kylo woke up in the morning with Hux's cat staring up at him over the edge of Hux's bed, which was kind of a freaky way to wake up, and croaked out a "Hello?" mostly just surprised. Thus disturbed, eyes still closed, Hux had rolled over and _bitten_ _him_ on the shoulder. Not in a sexy way. Kind of in a _let sleeping dogs lie_ way. Half awake, he'd bitten Kylo to subdue him, draped his arm and leg over Kylo's back, and gone to sleep like he'd never been woken. He'd never done that before. Kylo had never even been past the front door of his condo before. They'd been fucking for a whole year.

Kylo went back to sleep, too.

Last night—

—Didn't matter. Because Hux went to work on that Monday after he'd let Kylo meet his cat, and Kylo went back to his own place and then to work, too, and also: then Hux decided that they hated each other. And it only took two weeks for Kylo to decide that he agreed.

Last night was an accident. But this morning, Hux came _back_.

***

Funny thing, Hux thinks, watching Ren try to decide whether or not to turn him straight back out on his ear, but there are probably few people who look _less_ like they'd be what Kylo Ren is, actually, to Hux. Sunshine and clean sheets and a willingly opened door. Someone to fight with, when he's spoiling for a fight. A _yes_ when he just needs someone to let him _win._

Well—well, maybe that middle one, yes. Most of the time. Not right now. Right now, Kylo looks like he'd fall over in shock if Millicent sneezed on him.

"It's Thanksgiving," Hux says, "this week." And then when Kylo doesn't move, not even to take the bagel that Hux _knows_ is his favourite: "I've no one to cook for."

He's also never cooked a Thanksgiving meal in his life, nor does he know what such a meal might contain unless it really is just a two stone turkey and fifteen indistinguishable beige side-things—which is what American television would have him believe, but he's been lied to before—so it's a lucky thing for him that Ren is going to slam the door in his face now.

"You can cook?" Ren says, still staring at the bag in his hand.

"Well I don't _bake my own bagels_ , you fuckwit."

"No, I'm—"

"Come over," Hux says, suddenly certain. Suddenly very sure that if Ren's next word is _sorry_ , Hux won't survive it. "For Thanksgiving, or not, I don't give a damn. Come over for spaghetti, come make friends with my fucking cat, come _back_ with me."

"I," Ren says. "Um. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not going home for it, so. Yes, okay." And thank god, because if he hadn't agreed then, Hux would have had to keep talking, and Christ as his witness, he doesn't know _what_ he might have said.


End file.
